


Halfway There (But We'll Make It, I Swear)

by ishie



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 10:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13052244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: Five times Chidi Anagonye applied the sum total of his experience minutely examining the world around him in order to make sense of it to figure out what the deal is with the Good Place.Or ... not.





	Halfway There (But We'll Make It, I Swear)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Odyle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/gifts).



> Thanks to the usuals for the beta! Title from a Bon Jovi song. (I think Mindy would approve.)
> 
> Happy Yuletide!

**#16**

"Have I really not mentioned it before? Because I try to tell people before we... _Hey!_ "

Chidi scrambled to catch up with Eleanor before she disappeared around a corner. She gave him a sour look but slowed her pace to keep even with him.

"I would have remembered you mentioning your _directional insanity_ ," she bit out, "since the _entire point_ of teaming up is to get the fork out of this ice cave!"

They trudged along. His shirt sleeves were little protection against the biting air, but Eleanor had to be truly freezing in only a t-shirt and a pair of pants that barely reached her ankles. She hardly let on any discomfort, though. Aside from the ceaseless grumbling under her breath. She sighed in exasperation as they reached what looked to him like yet another identical corner in the thick white walls.

Why would paradise have an ice cavern setting, anyway? Chidi hated the cold. It seemed like a particularly cruel joke to place him in a neighborhood with the capability for such. But the universe had, so there must be some deeper meaning he was missing. Perhaps even in the Good Place, there was still room for personal moral and ethical growth. Even the best behavior on Earth didn't mean that a person was _perfect_. Look at his own predilection for almond milk! Perhaps the climate here was another compromise, like the cursing filter. What other reason would there be for so many circumstances that made him feel awkward or uncomfortable or downright unsafe?

Eleanor broke into his reverie with a soft, "Uh, Chidi?"

She was staring intently at something behind him. "What? What is it?" 

He turned to look but as soon as Eleanor slipped out of his field of vision, his head started to swim. He lost all sense of where he was, where she was, which way was up or down. He was completely untethered from any plane of reality, even his now usual unreality.

Eleanor grabbed his hand and the tunnel righted itself. Chidi did not. His feet were frozen to the ceiling. A huge white-furred beast blocked the tunnel ahead of (behind?) them, hunched over its meal. Ichor glistened on the horns around its gaping mouth and the nauseating sound of teeth on bones ground into Chidi's ears. 

"What _is_ that?"

Eleanor didn't answer, exactly, but she did say, "I think this ice cave might be my fault. After the dinner party at the swingers' broke up, I maybe kinda sorta asked Janet how interactive the VR movies can get."

"Oh, god. You turned one of those sci-fi movies into porn again, didn't you?"

"I was drunk!"

"That's how it always happens!"

 

**#127**

They turned into an aisle filled with notebooks of every size and description. Chidi slumped over the handle of the cart. "You realize we could just, you know, ask Janet for all of this?" 

"I thought you'd be more excited! If we're going to do this school thing, we ought to do it right, and this was always my favorite part. Every year, my mom would drop me off at K-Mart to buy my supplies. You'd be surprised how far three dollars could go, and how little big families pay attention to which kid is slipping Trapper Keepers into their cart and if that kid even belongs to them." 

Whoops, that was way more than she meant to say. Bristling under Chidi's soft-eyed and sympathetic look, Eleanor tried again. "I mean, it was so exciting, you know? All those empty notebooks and unsharpened pencils, just waiting, completely unruined by impossible expectations and disappointments and my abysmal grasp of math." _Get it together, Eleanor!_

"Jeez, why am I dredging up all this boring old nostalgia crap?" She spun away from his sympathetic look, but all that caring and sympathy clung to her back like a cheap bodycon dress. 

"I know we haven't known each other long," Chidi said, as she scoured the shelves for something that would help her change the subject, "but I really didn't expect there to be this much confronting past emotional traumas in paradise. Did you?"

"Ooh, look!" Eleanor squealed, reaching for a basket hanging from a nearby shelf. "Highlighters! Only these hideous green and yellow ones left, though, which is weird. Which color would you rather have?"

 

**#331**

"I can't believe you, Eleanor!"

"Oh, like you're so perfect," Eleanor spat, "with your stomachaches and your worrying and your stupid tight nerd pants and your surprisingly ripped abs. I'd just as soon kiss a rancor."

She had barely gotten out the last before they launched themselves at each other again from opposite ends of the oubliette. Their hands were everywhere at once; her skin smooth under his lips and her teeth leaving sharp shocks up and down his neck.

Chidi barely registered her moans. No, not _her_ moans. It was coming from above, from the grate in the ceiling. No, not moaning. Groaning, horrible sounds of pain that kept distracting him. They sounded so familiar, like he'd heard them before somehow, even though the oubliette had only appeared after Eleanor managed to get out of Bread Zeppelin with Angelique's diary. Well, after that, and the subsequent Chidi-running-into-Michael-so-hard-they-knocked-heads-and-briefly-lost-whatever-passed-for-consciousness-in-the-afterlife. 

A vague image of Janet smiling through shrieks of horror floated through his head, chased away quickly by Eleanor's fingers curling around his—

"Holy motherforking shirtballs," he moaned, deaf to everything but the bright burning pleasure of Eleanor.

 

**#402**

"Place the dice in the center of the cargo cage to signal the end of your turn and draw seven," Chidi read aloud.

Tahani did. Jason flopped on the floor beside the table, striking another match and waving it through the air while giggling.

Ignoring him, Tahani asked, "Now what do I do?" She flipped her hair over her shoulder and squinted at the cards in her hand. "Can I buy the cruiser now?"

"Uhh..." Chidi flipped through the booklet again. "Oh, here we go. It looks like it's dealer's choice whether to allow purchases and trades at the conclusion of a turn."

"Oh, goody! I'll buy the cruiser, then." She pushed her towering stack of chits across the table and reached for the cruiser still in Eleanor's hand. "That's a fair price. Give it here!"

"Hang on, he didn't say he was allowing it!" Eleanor, indignation flushing her face, turned to glare at Chidi. "Are you? You made me wait a full turn to buy insurance on my cargo!"

Tahani flipped her hair again and ran her fingers along Chidi's arm. "Oh, please. Won't you help me? I worked so hard to get the... the dosh together for this cruiser, Chidi! You know I need it to keep the warships on the run!"

Chidi flipped furiously through the booklet again, hoping to find something to save him somewhere in its endlessly contradictory and confusing instructions and rules. 

Jason sat up. "You guys, what is even the point of this game? It doesn't seem like anyone can win and you all have just been getting mad at each other all day. I don't even think you guys _like_ playing it. Why would Heaven have such a boring thing anyway? It doesn't have even _one_ laser!"

All three stared at him. 

"What?" he asked. "Do I still have Kool-Aid teeth?" He leaned over to peer at his indistinct reflection in the surface of the table, still twirling the match, which slipped out of his hand and dropped onto a stack of early 2000s _WWF_ fan magazines that Eleanor refused to put away. They went up immediately, a column of flame rising up to the ceiling.

For possibly the first time in his life or afterlife, Chidi didn't hesitate. He threw the game booklet directly into the hottest part of the fire, grabbed Eleanor's hand, and ran.

 

**#779**

"All I wanted was a little bit of existential suffering to call my own, you know? Is that so terrible?"

"Well, yes." Chidi stared at the man. "No, sorry, uh, I thought... Didn't you say this was the Good Place? What does—"

"Ahh, fork it. That was the wrong line. Sorry, Chidi, I thought working out this whole branching choose-your-adventure script would help keep me on track this time but I'm on the wrong page here. We're supposed to be doing your orientation and somehow," he paused and waggled one finger in the air as if turning pages in an invisible book. "Oh, would you look at that? I skipped straight to the thousandth year reveal! Janet..."

Chidi jumped as a white woman popped into being next to him. "What? Who—"

The man waved a finger and Chidi's voice dried up. "Hi Janet, will you please ask Bort to fix the outcomes on the Swinburne question? It took me to the wrong answer, which I know she did on purpose. Tell her... Tell her she can start suiting up on the lizard thing as soon as I wipe this guy."

"Sure thing." 

She disappeared, and Chidi's voice came back mid-word.

"—ait, hold on. You said existential suffering? Why would there be existential suffering in the Good—" 

The man raised one hand and snap—


End file.
